Talk:Panama Canal
I never could figure out why TR didn't go ahead with his canal-digging plans immediately after GWI when the Rebs were too badly beaten to object. Not only would it have yielded strategic advantages--and the importance of that has to have become clear during the war in operations like the one where the Dakota was sent up around the Horn--it would have provided employment and investment opportunities during the downturn portrayed in B&I. :Were there canal digging plans? I can't find anything in Breakthroughs or B&I suggesting such. Certainly, the US had a pretty big hunk of territory to do something with up north. TR 16:35, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::Sorry, I phrased that confusingly. There were no plans and I can't figure out why it wouldn't have occurred to him. Turtle Fan 18:26, May 26, 2011 (UTC) Also, I wonder why they wanted to do Nicaragua instead of Panama. Nicaragua's not a bad choice but Panama is better. Panama was owned by Colombia until the OTL Roosevelt supported an uprising by Panamanian nationalists in exchange for the Canal Zone. (Amusingly, he attempted to conceal US involvement but eventually allowed himself to be goaded into bragging about his coup publicly. Less amusing was the $10 million indemnity we then had to pay Colombia.) 191 Colombia was neutral in both Great Wars. It did rely on US support during its conflict with Venezuela in 1925. Sinclair could have said "Okay, we saved your bacon, now let us dig a canal through your isthmus" (which would be a good euphemism for sex) and the Rebs would still have been too weak to object. (Maybe the Germans would have stopped them? The alliance had never been chillier and they backed Venezuela, though what they stood to gain from it is beyond me.) :Kidde's exact quote is "the Confederates talked about digging a canal through Nicaragua or one of those damn places." (My italics). Since it sounds like the idea never got past the talking stage, they probably didn't have particular country hammered out yet, or Kidde couldn't remember which one, or just remembered Nicaragua because it's the biggest Central American country area-wise (well, I guess that's still technically Colombia in 191, but you know what I mean). TR 16:35, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::I suppose. Turtle Fan 18:26, May 26, 2011 (UTC) Also, I suppose Sinclair would have shied away from a foreign policy that came so close to imperialism. Unique among the Socialist presidents in TL-191, he actually gave some indication that he knew what socialism is, though he certainly was lax in following it domestically. Talk about power corrupting, huh? :Eh, those damn Reactionary Dems did wreck some of his more outrageous schemes, like pensions for everyone. TR 16:35, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::Oh, certainly. He gave up without much of a fight, though. ::Now in the western democracies, being in power, with the corresponding accountability when things go badly, does have a way of pulling people and parties in toward the center. And economic growth and the vanishing of unemployment which the Roaring Twenties produced would be sufficiently popular that Sinclair would hesitate to tamper with them. But politicians well to the right of him, like Lyndon Johnson, have used periods of economic growth as opportunities to expand the social safety net. Sinclair seems to have taken pretty much the same approach as Coolidge, and that's just silly. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was his idea to release the SA books not as $8 mass market editions but as big-ass "Trade Paperbacks" that cost twice as much. ::And at the same time he pursued his non-interventionist foreign policy which every POV character confirmed was the least popular plank in his platform. "I'll do what you don't want me to do, but to make up for it I won't do what you do want!" And he's his party's only two-termer? Turtle Fan 18:26, May 26, 2011 (UTC) :::Didn't Al Smith get re-elected? Jelay14 20:57, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::::Yes, but he was only a term-and-a-halfer. Turtle Fan 22:18, May 26, 2011 (UTC) And speaking of power corrupting, in OTL we've known that socialist governments can get over their allergy to imperialism quickly enough, ever since the USSR's Mongolian adventure in 1924. That was one year earlier than the Venezuelan-Colombian conflict and was in the third year of the USSR's socialist government, as opposed to the fifth year of the USA's. Turtle Fan 16:06, May 26, 2011 (UTC) :Sinclair did seem to drop on Canada like a ton of bricks without a qualm. TR 16:35, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::True, true. Maybe he doesn't consider it imperialism if it's something that was already under US jurisdiction before he took office? (After all, if a leader ever wanted to get really strict about it, we'd pretty much be down to the Gadsden Purchase the the island of Manhattan.) Or maybe once he took office he realized he'd better get pragmatic and serious about immediate security threats, and Canada was big enough and close enough to qualify. Turtle Fan 18:26, May 26, 2011 (UTC) Also, I wonder what happened to the Canal Zone in Worldwar. The Lizards owned Panama after the war ended, and they showed no inclination to let human powers maintain their imperial holdings, with the exceptions of: France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, etc etc etc (Germany); Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia (USSR); Northern Ireland (UK); Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah, Singapore, Brunei, and the Dutch East Indies (Japan). But a major US military installation smack dab in the middle of the Race's American possessions wouldn't fly. On the other hand, all the human powers would want to keep the canal open; it was invaluable for trade. For military purposes it would have lost its value, since even if the US maintained control of the Zone, it could never have held out for any length of time in the event of a war. My guess is the Lizards took over operations of the canal and kept it open to everyone who wanted it. And since they wouldn't've had much knowledge of what to do with it, they probably let some locals run it on their behalf, which would increase the Race's prestige in Latin America. Turtle Fan 16:18, May 26, 2011 (UTC) :The Race seemed pragmatic on matter of trade by the time of the Colonization series, so I'd expect they'd open her up for commercial ventures. And yes, given what little we know about how the administered, they seemed ok with using locals for that sort of project. TR 16:35, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::One thing they were pretty good at was building goodwill among people whose homelands passed directly to their control from the dominance of a foreign power. India was an exception--a very large exception, but still. ::Actually the idea came to me just last night that the Lizards have got to be the nicest villains I've ever encountered in fiction. Their human rights record was better than that of any human power except possibly the United States, and that's debatable. They were by far the most ethical foreign policy-wise, and that's not easy to do when you show up out of nowhere and say "We're here to colonize you, bitches." As soon as they learned the human laws of warfare they started playing by the rules with above-average scruples. They suppressed narcotics trafficking, and by all the signs pretty effectively, until well into Aftershocks despite all the human powers shamelessly pushing ginger onto them like they'd just lost the Opium Wars. They started off with a very enlightened environmental concern, too, though when the Colonization Fleet arrived they introduced a bunch of invasive species and said "Tough shit" to anyone who complained. Turtle Fan 18:26, May 26, 2011 (UTC) Considering the peace of Cairo dictated that the Race had to withdraw from all occupied US territory and the Panama Canal Zone was officially US territory in 1942 then they should have withdrawn - not from Panama the country but just the Panama Canal Zone itself 16:07, July 11, 2018 (UTC) :We saw your comment elsewhere, and have responded to it. Let's shut this down to avoid duplication. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:09, July 11, 2018 (UTC)